Part of Fantagraphics’ fabulous EC Library series, collecting and beautifully-presenting the best of Max and William Gaines’ EC Comics, Bomb Run collects the 50s-era war comics of Kurtzman and Severin. Read the rest

My friend Jon Lebkowsky (an editor at bOING bOING and the co-founder of Fringe Ware) says, "Your Popeye post sent me to Amazon, where I discovered you can acquire old original issues of Mad Magazine (and various other comics, including Batman #1 and Superman #1) for the Kindle. Best of all, Mad #1 is free!" (It's also free on Comixology) Read the rest

Damen Corrado from Imperium Pictures let me know about this nice video tribute to MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman. He says "it features a lot of his work from the current exhibition at the Society of Illustrators in NYC, and interviews with Al Jaffee and Bob Grossman, with a jazz soundtrack by Nik Turner of Hawkwind."

Cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) founded the satirical MAD magazine in 1952 and forever altered the way young readers experienced the media and consumer culture around them. As the late film critic Roger Ebert explained, “I learned to be a movie critic by reading MAD magazine. I learned a lot of other things from the magazine too, including a whole new slant on society. MAD’s parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin–of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same dumb old formulas. I did not read the magazine, I plundered it for clues to the universe.”

After MAD, Kurtzman worked with a team of artists including Al Jaffee, Jack Davis and Will Elder on a series of short-lived but influential publications, including Trump, Humbug and Help! At Help!, a fortuitous nexus of nascent sketch comedy and underground “comix,” Kurtzman worked with then unknowns Woody Allen, Gloria Steinem and R. Crumb, among many others. Terry Gilliam, who met John Cleese while working there, considered Kurtzman “one of the godparents of Monty Python.”

Kurtzman's ground-breaking color rough for the cover of MAD #1 along
with the printed cover (1952).

“I think Harvey’s MAD was more important than pot and LSD in shaping the generation that protested the Vietnam War. . . . Kurtzman was the single most significant influence on a couple of generations of comics artists.”
— Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus

“In many ways Harvey was one of the godparents of Monty Python… [he] was one of the great idols of my generation of cartoonists.”
— Terry Gilliam, director

“The covers of MAD #11 and Humbug #2 changed the way I saw the world forever!. . . Even though I’ve made a name in my own right, I still feel like a worshipful fanboy.”
— R. Crumb

“After MAD, drugs were nothing!”
—Patti Smith

“Had he not existed, I’d be a dull, humorless lout working in a muffler shop somewhere, and so would practically everyone I know. I shudder to think how horrible the world would be today without that which Harvey Kurtzman begat!”
—Dan Clowes, creator of Ghostworld

My friends Monte Beauchamp and Denis Kitchen have curated a 120-piece exhibition showcasing the work of MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman. It opens March 8, 2013 at the Society of Illustrators in New York. It looks incredible.

The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators is proud to present "The Art of Harvey Kurtzman," a diverse exhibition spanning the career of the man who created MAD and who had a broad and profound influence on American popular culture.